“Much of my work here is done.”
-George Kliavkoff

George Kliavkoff, the chief digital officer told the staff at NBC Universal that he will be exercising an option in his contract to step down by the end of they year.  Kliavkoff was one of the masterminds behind the launch of Hulu, the startup that shook the online video industry.

“George came to NBC Universal when we were nowhere in digital,” stated Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC Universal. “We asked him to help us change the fundamental orientation of a traditional media company from an analog to a digital mindset. George did that.”  Kliavkoff also pushed for NBC’s role in broadcasting the past Olympics.

Where Will George Go From Here?
George indicated that he is interested in some sort of role as an investor, digital startup, or digital startup within a traditional company.”

Below is the full e-mail that he sent to the company (via paidContent):

(more…)

Hulu.com is airing NBC’s 30 Rock one week earlier than the season premier.  This way it helps build up the hype of the show.  I love the idea of putting up a show on the web before it hits the television screen, especially one that wins an Emmy.  

30 Rock is a show that was created by famous Sarah Palin impression expert, Tina Fey.  The show stars Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, Alec Baldwin, Jack McBrayer, Jane Krakowski, Keith Powell, Judah Friedlander, Maulik Pancholy, Scott Adsit, Katrina Bowden, Lonny Ross, Kevin Brown, and Grizz Chapman.

The above video will be available for about another week. Showtime did the same thing with Dexter and Californication.

General Electric (NYSE:GE) subsidiary NBC is planning on taking Saturday Night Live online with a new video site.  The Executive Producer of SNL, Lorne Michaels is planning on launching the site with a library of clips from the past and present.  The video site will also have clips from The Line.  The Line is a show created by producers, writers, and performers from SNL.  The site would have the same look & feel as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

SNL gained a lot of attention from Tina Fey’s portrayal of Sarah Palin.  SNL clips were viewed millions of times on Hulu and on NBC.com.  One of the ideas for the new video site will have individual cast member pages with top 10 clips of them.  The guest host would also decide their favorite SNL moments were. 

Monetizing the SNL site might be tricky because even sites like Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die is struggling.  And skits that include music clips would require royalty fees.  Bringing attention to the website will also be difficult as election time winds down.  It is just too difficult to replicate the hilarity of the clip below.

DoubleClick, the digital advertising firm that Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) bought for $3.1 billion in March 2008 has announced today that they will be powering online media advertisements on NBCOlympics.com.  DoubleClick has the ability to embed ads within the Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Silverlight 2 player. 

This feature is called DoubleClick In-Stream.  In-Stream supports Flash, Real Media, and Windows Media player.

“With hundreds of advertisers, multiple platforms and large site traffic spikes, we needed to work with a partner that could provide an integrated, scalable, robust solution,” said Steven Gold, Vice President, Sales Planning and Operations, NBC Universal Digital Media. “Thanks to DoubleClick In-Stream’s new support for Silverlight 2, we are able to monetize our groundbreaking online video coverage on the same platform we already use for display and mobile advertising. This lets our sales and operations teams work together really efficiently.”

Words from Google and Microsoft spokespeople

“Microsoft has always had a strong commitment to working closely with partners and the industry to enable them to leverage our tools and platform to deliver great user experiences. With Silverlight, we’ve extended that commitment to the advertising space,” stated Scott Guthrie, Corporate VP of Microsoft’s .NET Developer Division. “We’re pleased to see the investment DoubleClick has made to enable customers such as NBCOlympics.com to take advantage of Silverlight to offer compelling packages to their advertisers.”

“DoubleClick’s vision is to help publishers grow their revenues by creating great user experiences and providing compelling value to advertisers,” said Google Group Product Manager Ari Paparo. “By expanding the capabilities of DoubleClick In-Stream to work with Silverlight 2, we can make it possible for clients to create unique entertainment and advertising experiences without increasing their workload or creating new complex processes.”

Related Links:
1. Google press release
2. InformationWeek

Every weekday between today and mid-August, Hulu will be streaming a new movie, documentary, or sci-fi film.  The calendar of the films is available at: http://www.hulu.com/summer.  Here’s the catch: you won’t know what is playing until the day of.  While this is an annoying feature, I’m sure it’ll keep users coming back to Hulu out of curiosity.

Hulu’s first movie of the event is Lost in Translation starring Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray.  The movie is about a man that comes to Tokyo to film a whiskey commercial bonding with a woman that he would most likely not find himself getting along with.

Hulu Days of Summer has a widget too.  The widget can be embedded in blog posts, social networks, etc.  The widget can be seen below.

Hulu is a video website created through a partnership between NBC and FOX.  Hulu directly competes with Google’s YouTube.

“We’re absolutely convinced at Cox that online revenue is continuing to grow,”stated John Dyer, EVP of Cox Enterprises. “If you look at Cox’s history, we’ve not necessarily been the first into a space… But we’ve prided ourselves in the course of history in being early investors.”

Cox Enterprises, the communications company that owns a large number of TV, radio, and newspaper companies is planning to acquire Adify Corporation. Adify is an advertising company that brokers ads for publishers and spreads advertisements for marketers. Cox plans on acquiring the digital advertising company for $300 million.

Adify’s clients include Martha Stewart Living Omimedia and several finance web sites created owned by Forbes Inc.

Early investors in Adify include NBC and Time Warner.  These companies will cash out and won’t have any further influence on Adify’s operations.  NBC will still be a customer.  Cox also owns Autotrader.com.

Hulu is proving more and more everyday that they are not Clown Co. Hulu has just made a solid move for catering to those that prefer having RSS aggregation websites as their browser homepage.

Now Hulu has a way to add RSS feeds for several categories of videos on their site including: Recently Added Videos, Recently Added Shows, Highest Rated Videos, Most Popular Videos, Most Popular Videos This Week, Most Popular Videos This Month, Most Popular Videos All Time, Soon-To-Expire Videos.  Personally I’m going to take every one of these RSS feeds and add them to a separate tab on my current homepage, Netvibes.

There is also an Add Video check box that allows Hulu to embed the video within the RSS feed aggregation box.  This feature is not quite supported yet, but I’m sure it’s a work-in-progress.

What makes these RSS feeds interesting is that Feedburner powers them.  Feedburner is owned by Google and Google owns YouTube, a Hulu competitor. Oh, the irony.  No matter what you do on the web, it somehow connects to Google in some sort of degree.  Just like all of us are six degrees from Kevin Bacon, every Google competitor is 2 degrees away from Google.

Another interesting feature of Hulu is the ability to embed videos into social networks.  This will surely drive additional hits to Hulu.  Hulu is currently ranked 3,000 or so on Alexa and growing.  Below is a screen shot of Hulu in my Netvibes.

Great feature, keep it up Hulu team.

Hulu’s content is provided by Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) through NBC and warner Bros., General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) through NBC, MGM Mirage (NYSE:MGM), Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (NYSE:LGF),